Book to the Future

Y'all might remember the grand entrance of the Vook in 2009. If not, in short: it's a form of enhanced e-book with movies and other media built into it. Video + book = Vook. Simple, cool, innovative, no?

Unfortunately, many readers found the videos and additional media distracting, particularly for works of fiction. (I could have told you that countless nonconsecutive video clips do not help a reader immerse him/herself in a fictional world.) Vook has since moved toward more nonfiction titles, however, and received a better response.

How a Vook differs from the Internet, I have no idea.

However! If you thought the Vook was the pinnacle of book/media mash-ups, you thought wrong. Enter Booktrack, a company that makes soundtracks for books.

Yes, soundtracks for books. Now while you're reading about a forest, you can hear THE SOUNDS OF A FOREST. Like, I don't know, birds and whatnot. When Bro McLadiesMan begins playing a mega sweet power ballad for his lady fair, you can listen along. When you get to a super intense part, you get to listen to super intense movie trailer-style music. &c, &c. (There are previews on the Booktrack website if you're interested.)

The Booktrack speed can be adjusted to your reading speed, as well, so the synchronization between sound effects and text should be reasonably good.

Be that as it may, I think I'll find Booktrack books similar to Vooks: over-hyped and distracting. I'm all for innovation in the field and I think it's necessary to the future success of print media, but I'm not sure rocking the audio equivalent of a movie trailer in the background is the best way to achieve this.

However! I'm curious, as always, to hear what you think. So, mes auteurs: yea or nay on the Booktrack experience?

More Terms to Know (Rerun)

Meetings abound, mes auteurs, so here's a quick rerun re: publishing terms to know! — E

Episode: "More Terms to Know"
Originally aired: Monday, February 28th, 2011

In the world of publishing, mes auteurs, there are a lot of terms to know. As our digital overlords begin to claim more and more of this territory for themselves, I think an e-update of sorts is in order.

Therefore! I've put together a list of indispensable e-book/Internet-related terms I think you should know. If you think of any more (and I'm sure you will), please don't hesitate to post them in the comments.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). A system for separating a web page's or e-book's style/formatting from its content. For example: rather than putting a tag around every block of text that specifies the font as Garamond, you can just have CSS declare that all text should be in Garamond from the outset.

Think of it as like giving directions from the passenger seat of the car: you can just tell the driver, "go straight until I say otherwise" from the outset, rather than saying, "keep going straight" at each intersection.

E-book (also ebook, eBook). An electronic book available in a wide variety of formats (e.g. AZW, EPUB, MOBI, PDF) on a variety of devices (e.g. Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook).

EPUB (also ePub, ePUB, EPub, epub). The industry standard e-book format. It's basically a zipped-up website.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The language used to write websites and e-books. It's currently on version five (HTML5).

PDF (also .pdf). Standing for "Portable Document Format," a .pdf is a file format readable by many (but not all) e-reading devices. Its primary selling point is that it represents documents independent of the machine it runs on, so a .pdf e-book looks the same no matter what devices is used to read it. For this reason, however, .pdf files are not reflowable (see below).

Reflowable content. Content (words, diagrams, illustrations, &c) that can change or "reflow" depending on the device designed to read it. Text "reflows" when you change the font size on your Kindle or when you switch back and forth between devices with different display sizes.

This is one reason e-versions of the same title look different on different devices; another is that different e-tailers do different things to the source files they receive from publishers before making the book available to the consumer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Basically, this is the idea of improving your visibility via search engines on the Internet. For example: if you Google "[your name] author," you want your personal website to be one of the first few hits. Taking into account how search engines work and what search terms people use, it's possible to move up the list of results (often dramatically).

XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language). A family of XML languages (see below) that serves as an alternative to HTML (above).

XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Wikipedia says it best: "A set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form." If you're using Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you're already familiar with one of XML's many uses (it's the "x" in ".docx," ".xlsx," &c).

More on the World of Tomorrow

With Borders no longer with us and digital sales comprising more and more of the market, I thought now would be a good time to revisit how these trends have evolved over time and where they might lead over the next few years.

First, while I don't think there's much of a physical future for magazines and newspapers, I do think there will always be a market for physical books. (I think magazines will go entirely digital over the next decade, with existing name brands already finding some success—the New Yorker has made a cool $1 million with their iPad app.)

The market for physical and used books five and ten years from now will certainly be smaller than it is today, and my expectation is that most physical media will eventually be found only in libraries. Independent and used book stores will, I believe, remain in business, but I think by the end of this decade almost all new books—almost certainly all new fiction—will be produced and consumed electronically.

Categories such as coffee table/art books and children's books will probably take longer to make this transition.

Second, I expect a continuation of a phenomenon which I predicted last November: the resurgence of the independent book store. Will indies control as much of the market as they did before the chains took up residence in the 1980s? I don't think so. But I do think there is a demand for physical books and that there are dollars to be had, and many areas that have lost Borders locations may well turn to independents to supply their books.

Also, as I've mentioned before, the independent book store is the go-to location for author readings, book signings, community events, open mic nights, and in-person browsing. Try as they might, online vendors can't replicate these advantages.

Finally, while I'm not sure how Amazon and Barnes & Noble are going to develop as competitors, I think that each will have to offer a spate of unique—perhaps proprietary—perks and technological advantages in order for them to coexist. Right now Barnes & Noble's primary advantage is its physical retail space, but I don't know how long that will continue to be the case. The further we trek into digital territory, the more important the Nook and e-book sales will be to B&N, and the less appealing it will be for the company to maintain its warehouse, shipping, and storefront infrastructures.

What do you think, mes auteurs?

The Vanishing Advance

You may have been hearing about this from other publishing professionals or from fellow writers, mes auteurs, but in case you haven't heard, the average advance has declined a bit over the past couple of years. Much of my evidence for this is either proprietary or anecdotal, so hopefully there are a few literary agents or editors in the house to confirm the trend.

In case you're curious, though, there are a few reasons I think lower advances have been—and continue to be—the norm.

Belt-tightening. With forbidding economic indicators such as unemployment still high and talk of a double-dip recession floating around, editors and publishers have become much more frugal in terms of the advances they offer. Many have modified their P&Ls to reflect current sell-through and consumer habits, and decreased demand for physical books has resulted in decreased up-front cash for authors.

Publishing is a business, and we've got to try to make money on as many books as possible in order to stay in business. Speaking of physical media, another reason (à mon avis) for lower advances is:

The shift to electronic media. Because e-books don't face the same kind of supply chain/distribution challenges as physical books and are not returnable, it's easier for publishers to run P&Ls for e-books and to simply offer higher royalties than to stick with the advance model.

True, the vast majority of titles currently acquired are eventually released as concurrent physical and electronic books, but I don't think the day is long off in which a substantial section of the market will comprise e-only titles. Once that occurs, I think the idea of the advance will become even more antiquated; it's much easier to pay an author a fixed percentage of dollars earned in the more or less real-time environment of e-book sales than to bother with advances.

In fact, much (though certainly not all) of the work done by advances is obviated by the fact that:

Advertising and marketing budgets for e-books are often lower than for physical books. While a publishing house—particularly a large one—will pay the advertising and marketing costs for their lead titles, there are many midlist titles and titles published by smaller publishers for which the burden of lining up media and marketing falls squarely on the author. The advance is a way of mitigating this hardship; authors can use the money given to them by publishers to pay to promote their books (e.g. conduct book tours, create book trailers, and so on).

As advertising and marketing have become easier and cheaper—predominantly by way of social networking services like Facebook and Twitter—the cost of promoting books through these channels has necessarily also fallen. If publishers feel they can pay less money for the same commercial success from any given title, they absolutely will. Wouldn't you?

So that, dear readers, is my take on why average advances seem to be declining in this industry. It may be a relatively short-term reaction to the continuing economic uncertainty inherent in the recession, or (as I believe) a long-term reaction to the drastic changes that are occuring in the publishing industry as it transitions from physical to electronic media. Regardless of which, I think it signals an industry-wide recognition of the challenges the business is facing.

What do you think, gentle readers?

This Is My Shocked Face

Hot on the heels of yesterday's post about the greater e-book market, word has it that HarperCollins is attributing their drop in paperback sales to sales of e-book editions, reporting that "the mass-market paperback is the thing we're going to cannibalise most."

British spellings of "cannibalize" notwithstanding, let me just say: I'm 0% surprised by this.

I feel for you, J.E. Medrick (see yesterday's comments), but as I've said before, I just don't see how the mass market format can survive over the next five or so years.

The mass market paperback offers the following:

· Low price point;
· Relative portability;
· Higher disposability (readers are more willing to chuck a mass market paperback than a trade paperback or hardcover);
· Wide availability (book stores, grocery stores, department stores, drug stores, &c).

The e-book offers the following:

· Low (on average) price point (and getting lower);
· High portability;
· High disposability (though you wouldn't need to, since e-book files occupy no physical and very little digital space);
· Wide availability (at least in the United States).

Additionally, both formats are dominated by adult (as opposed to children's) fiction and cater to similar audiences (middle-aged women).

I think once the price of e-readers (specifically the Kindle) consistently drops below the $100 mark, mass market paperback sales will start taking a real beating. To my mind, the only barrier to the complete cannibalization of mass market paperback sales by electronic books—in the United States, anyway—is the price of the e-reading device; remove that, and there's no reason to keep the mass market around. Print runs of any real quantity will rapidly become a waste of money, and I don't think anyone would really want a POD mass market paperback when they could just as easily get a POD trade paperback.

While I do think the mass market will physically exist for longer than five years, I think that existence will be limited to personal libraries and used book stores.

What do you think, ladies and gentlebros?

The Final Frontier

There's been talk—a lot of talk, mes auteurs—about the shift from print to digital media in the book publishing industry, both in a general sense and on this blog in particular. E-readers are becoming more ubiquitous every year; more and more books are consumed electronically; physical print runs are getting smaller and smaller.

However! It's important to remember that simply because something is the case in the United States doesn't mean it's necessarily true for the rest of the world. (I happen to believe civilization ends at the Hudson, but that's another story.)

The shift toward e-books isn't as pronounced in other English-speaking countries as it is in the United States, which is probably as much a function of platform/device availability/e-book rights as it is purely one of population size. For instance, e-book sales in the UK in 2010 were £180MM, or about $294MM; compare that to US 2010 e-book sales of $441.3MM.

US e-book sales were up $165% over the previous year, pushing their sales to 8% of the overall market (up from 3%); in the UK, the increase over 2009 sales was a much more modest 20%.

There is a word for this, folks, and it's spelled B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Now, I have some theories about how e-books will come to parity with physical media in markets across different continents—and I can post about those eventually, if folks are interested—but the main point is that physical books aren't losing ground to electronic media as quickly or in the same ways as is occurring here in the United States. Even after we hit e-parity in the United States (my guess is 2013), there will still be a sizeable demand for English-language physical books overseas.

I do expect that, eventually, physical books will be left more or less to the bibliophiles. The fact that this may happen in a matter of years in the US, however, is no reason to believe it will happen as quickly or to the same extent elsewhere.

Now You Can a Borrower and a Lender Be

In case you haven't yet heard, dear readers, the Kindle has caught up with the Nook in one important regard: later this year, you'll be able to borrow Amazon's e-books from public libraries. Odds of me getting a Kindle: slightly improved.

Amazon will be teaming up with OverDrive, a leading provider of digital content for thousands of libraries across the country, to enable a borrowing system analogous to that available with Barnes & Noble's Nook. As far as I know, there are no details yet on exactly when this feature will be ready, but I expect it will be well in advance of the holiday season (to help persuade yours truly, among others, to buy one).

So! This leads me to a two-part Prithee, Inform Me:

1. If you own a Nook, how often do you use the library lending feature? Do you enjoy it?

2. Does Amazon's announcement impact your desire to own a Kindle in any significant way? If you don't yet own an e-reader (but would like one), would this cause you to purchase a Kindle over a Nook?

I realize the devices differ in a number of ways apart from the question of lendability (I've played with a lot of e-readers for "work"), but I think the question is interesting and useful regardless, especially as libraries scramble to figure out what role they'll play in the publishing world of tomorrow.

Thoughts? Theories? Tholiloquies?

Prithee, Inform Me: E-Self-Publishing

Following hot on the heels of Nathan's Author Monetization Week—and if you haven't read these posts, go read them right now—is yet another poll (o joy! O rapture!) to gauge just how many of you are considering electronically self-publishing your titles over taking the traditional route to publication.

Lo!



And on Wednesday: Better Know A(nother) Conference!

Five Things to Know About the eRevolution

Following up on Nathan Bransford's two posts on the subject, I'd like to throw in my own $0.02 on the theory of making bajillions of dollars self/e-publishing.

Actually, since this is a Top Five List™, make that $0.10.

1. Self/e-publishing is no more a get-rich-quick scheme than traditional publishing. The only difference is that rather than ending up in a drawer or as a doorstop or in the trash bin, a sub-par manuscript can now be made available to millions of people on the Internet in short order. However! Consider this:

Traditional publishing: your book isn't very good or is unsalable. You pay no/few up-front costs, get rejected by agents, and make no money.

Self-publishing electronically: your book might not be very good or salable, but you still might make a few sales. You pay no up-front costs and possibly make a few bucks.

Something is better than nothing, but after awhile you have to ask yourself whether the opportunity cost of spending months writing a novel and then only getting $50 through Amazon is worth it.

2. Think of e-books like apps. A beautifully written app that doesn't fill a niche may sell, but probably not well. A shoddily written app that fills a niche will probably sell better, but probably not well, and the next app that does the same thing better will quickly overshadow it. A beautifully written app that fills a niche will sell well, and through the Mysteries of the Internet, some become phenomenal bestsellers that earn their creators bajillions of dollars.

Ditto e-books.

3. Think about the advance in advance. The advance you can earn through traditional publishing may or may not end up being more than you'd make electronically (odds are it'll be more), but the beauty of the advance is in the word itself: you get it before you sell a single copy. Many midlist authors use money from their advances to finance author events, tours, &c that the publisher may not cover. Since you won't have that benefit with self-publishing electronically, most of you will have to rely on cheaper (or free!) methods of selling yourselves and your work.

4. Consider getting outside help. Even assuming you're a great writer, that doesn't necessarily mean you're a great editor, marketing manager, sales(wo)man, or graphic/web designer. If you know people who are, hire them! (Or, if you're best bros with said people but can't afford to hire them, ask for favors.) This is where that advance (see above) would come in handy. Maybe offer to cut them in on your profits.

5. Learn everything you can about the tools you're using. If you're selling through Amazon, learn as much as you can about how their search systems, recommendation systems, &c &c work. Read everything you can on search engine optimization (SEO), on-line advertising, and keywords in order to make sure your work is readily available when its title or your name is entered into search engines like Google or Bing. If you don't have time to do this, maybe ask that best bro of yours to do it for you (see above). If your best bro is already pretty knowledgeable about these things, so much the better.

As I've said before, mes auteurs, self-publishing is not a ticket to easy street and most self-published novels, electronic or physical, don't sell many copies. If you write a great book and do your research, however, it's possible to do pretty well for yourself.

Panic! at the Library

As part of my ongoing coverage of the astounding (and often strange) turns the publishing industry is taking as it shifts from paper-based to electronic media, I bring you this, mes auteurs: The Consumerist's report that HarperCollins is capping e-book loans at 26 check-outs. If a library purchases a HarperCollins e-book, they can only lend it 26 times before it "expires" and the library must purchase a new license from the publisher.

This is, à mon avis, completely nuts for several reasons.

First, the idea of forced obsolescence is probably so repugnant to most librarians that, rather than buy and re-buy the same e-book over and over, they're probably just not going to purchase HarperCollins e-books.

The publisher seems to be betting on librarians' collective fear that if they don't stock their e-books, patrons will simply buy e-books on-line and the libraries won't be able to justify their continued existence. If there's a way to breed ill will among your customers (that is, the librarians actually purchasing books for their libraries), this is it.

Second, the number 26 seems completely arbitrary to me. I'm not privy to any of the logistical tinkering or number-crunching the folks at HarperCollins did in order to arrive at this figure, but it seems to me (and you can see from the video in the article) that physical books last much longer than 26 check-outs (and I can tell you from experience that they consistently survive many more).

It's possible that this is an average number that takes into account all the books that go on shelves and are never or rarely checked out, left to rot over a fifty-year period with only a couple of loans. If that's the case, though, libraries would chuck the book when it became unusable and would probably not buy a new one, since no one wanted the original to begin with.

If a publisher is going to enforce a loan cap, I think it 1.) needs to be much higher than 26 (based entirely on my uninformed opinion), and 2.) should vary depending on the work in question. Harry Potter and the Seven Figure Advance is going to be borrowed a lot more often than Actuarial Mathematics for Dummies, and the loan cap should reflect this.

Finally, the whole reason the loan cap exists is as an analogue to the wear and tear suffered by physical books that eventually need replacing. I think one of the most destructive tendencies inherent to the publishing industry is not its resistance to electronic media, but its slavish insistence on making them exactly like physical media.

Instead of panicking over a perceived loss in revenues caused by books that no longer need to be replaced, publishers should be touting the non-physical nature of e-books as a tremendous boon: "You'll never need to replace this e-book! That means that rather than buy a new copy of the same book, you can spend the money you'll save on more of our e-books."

E-books don't take up physical shelf space, so the limiting factor that once forced a librarian to choose between replacing a popular title that's worn out and purchasing a different title—that is, space—no longer exists. More titles sold is good for everyone.

My rant is over for today, meine Autoren, but what do you think? Should publishers be able to cap library loans, and if so, is 26 a reasonable number?

The Agency Six

In case you haven't heard, mes auteurs, the last Big Six holdout on the agency model—Random House—has capitulated. Effective this month, their e-books are now being sold under the new pricing system.

What does this mean for you, gentle readers?

As Consumers

It means two major things: one, you'll likely be able to purchase Random House's titles directly from the iBookstore, and not exclusively through a third-party app like the one Amazon has for the Kindle; and two, you may be paying slightly more for your e-books.

As you may recall from my earlier post on the subject, the agency model treats the retailer as a middleman making a commission, not as a vendor setting his or her own price after purchasing goods wholesale. This means that rather than buying an e-book from the publisher at a predetermined discount and selling it to you at however low a price they want, retailers must now sell Random House's e-books at the publisher's price, keeping a 30% cut for themselves and sending the remainder to the publisher.

Many have speculated that this move is likely fueled by Apple's unveiling of the long-awaited iPad 2 (you can follow the event live here). If this is the case (and I don't know if it is, since the involved parties aren't commenting to the media), it would seem to betoken a certain amount of faith in Apple's business model.

As Authors

Again, this is pure speculation, but I imagine e-book royalties may be affected by this move. And not just for those of you with Random House book deals: now that the world's largest trade book publisher has signed off on the agency model, I imagine a slew of smaller publishers will follow suit. If any of you, gentle readers, know more about this than I do, please feel free to educate me/your fellow readers in the comments.

I'm also curious to see how this vote of confidence in the Apple program influences iBookstore sales. Should Apple eventually sport e-sales figures on par with those of Amazon, I think the increased competition could speed up the shift toward market parity (that is, equal dollar sales of physical and electronic books). My current guess is that 2011 will see e-books top 10% of the overall market, and that 50% of the market will comprise electronic books by the middle of 2014.

Finally, I imagine Amazon is unhappy about this, since it seriously undercuts their ability to set prices in the industry. However, they, too have not officially commented (as far as I know).

What do you think, mes auteurs? And more importantly—are you getting a second generation iPad?

More Terms to Know

In the world of publishing, mes auteurs, there are a lot of terms to know. As our digital overlords begin to claim more and more of this territory for themselves, I think an e-update of sorts is in order.

Therefore! I've put together a list of indispensable e-book/Internet-related terms I think you should know. If you think of any more (and I'm sure you will), please don't hesitate to post them in the comments.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). A system for separating a web page's or e-book's style/formatting from its content. For example: rather than putting a tag around every block of text that specifies the font as Garamond, you can just have CSS declare that all text should be in Garamond from the outset.

Think of it as like giving directions from the passenger seat of the car: you can just tell the driver, "go straight until I say otherwise" from the outset, rather than saying, "keep going straight" at each intersection.

E-book (also ebook, eBook). An electronic book available in a wide variety of formats (e.g. AZW, EPUB, MOBI, PDF) on a variety of devices (e.g. Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook).

EPUB (also ePub, ePUB, EPub, epub). The industry standard e-book format. It's basically a zipped-up website.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language). The language used to write websites and e-books. It's currently on version five (HTML5).

PDF (also .pdf). Standing for "Portable Document Format," a .pdf is a file format readable by many (but not all) e-reading devices. Its primary selling point is that it represents documents independent of the machine it runs on, so a .pdf e-book looks the same no matter what devices is used to read it. For this reason, however, .pdf files are not reflowable (see below).

Reflowable content. Content (words, diagrams, illustrations, &c) that can change or "reflow" depending on the device designed to read it. Text "reflows" when you change the font size on your Kindle or when you switch back and forth between devices with different display sizes.

This is one reason e-versions of the same title look different on different devices; another is that different e-tailers do different things to the source files they receive from publishers before making the book available to the consumer.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Basically, this is the idea of improving your visibility via search engines on the Internet. For example: if you Google "[your name] author," you want your personal website to be one of the first few hits. Taking into account how search engines work and what search terms people use, it's possible to move up the list of results (often dramatically).

XHTML (eXtensible HyperText Markup Language). A family of XML languages (see below) that serves as an alternative to HTML (above).

XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Wikipedia says it best: "A set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form." If you're using Microsoft Office 2007 or later, you're already familiar with one of XML's many uses (it's the "x" in ".docx," ".xlsx," &c).

Prithee, Inform Me: Retailing Versus E-Tailing

Remember, writers and readers, when I said that the decline of brick-and-mortar chains could spark an indie bookstore renaissance? Well, it turns out that Paul Carr over at TechCrunch just said the exact same thing. Great minds! &c, &c.

The point being: while Borders may very well emerge from bankruptcy and go on to survive for years, their current store closings (numbering 200, or a little less than a third) will generate storefront vacancies. Some buildings will turn into something else entirely, but I'm betting a fair number will house independent bookstores.

As Paul mentions (and as I've said), there are a number of functions brick-and-mortar stores serve (specialized knowledge, author events, cafés, the experience of physically browsing, and so on) that can't be duplicated by on-line vendors.

That said, I'm sticking with my long-standing belief that independent booksellers will make something of a comeback this decade. As for you folks: do you agree? And what would draw you away from the convenience of buying books in your living room and out to your local bookstore?

Anatomy of an E-book

I've gotten a few questions from the more tech-oriented among you, fair readers, as to what, exactly, an e-book file looks like. So! Allow me to illuminate... the EPUB format.

If you're looking for the short (and somewhat inaccurate) story: The EPUB format is the industry standard, and the file is sort of like a zipped up website. The book itself is written in the same code used to write web pages, and fancier books have extra files zipped into the final package.

If you're not familiar with the idea of "zipping up" a file, just imagine it as packing up all the stuff in your room. Your unpacked room represents all the various files and formats you'd like in the finished product; the single box you end up with that contains everything from your room is the zipped-up file.

For the more involved (and more technically correct) story, a basic EPUB file consists of the following:

· A bunch of pages written in XHTML that contain the written content of the book;
· CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to provide formatting;
· An XML file with the extension .opf that contains the book's metadata (title, the language it's written in, &c);
· An XML file with the extension .ncx that contains the book's hierarchical table of contents.

These last two XML files are what really separate an e-book from a website: they provide a linear structure to the book that require (for the most part) that it be read in a certain order. (Many books do contain hyperlinks and allow you to skip from page to page this way.)

Now, although EPUB is the standard by which the industry operates, not all e-book retailers use it (and those who do generally modify the files they receive from publishers or individuals to suit their particular standards). This is why e-books often look different from device to device.

The most visible example is that of Amazon's Kindle, which pretty much reads anything except EPUB (e.g. MOBI, PRC, AZW, PDF). Because Amazon needs to convert EPUB files before it can sell them to consumers, e-books may not always appear as publishers intended (due to the translation process in general, how the two coding systems handle different objects like tables and captions, and so on). What is possible via EPUB may not be possible in, say, MOBI, and vice-versa.

While I think that formats and devices will consolidate over time, I very much doubt we're going to see a one-format, handful-of-devices scenario for awhile. The good news is that there are ways to convert almost any file type to any other file type and many devices can either cross-read or run apps that are capable of doing so, so your library hopefully won't be (too) fragmented for the time being.

That's it for today, amigos and -as. Friday: the pre-Valentine's Day round-up!

This Is A Business: Redux

I first made this point a little over a year ago, gentle readers, but it bears repeating.

The other day I overheard a conversation in which one book-loving acquaintance of mine expressed the opinion that selling e-books amounts to a betrayal of the physical book.

Let me be the first to say: this a bunch of maudlin nonsense.

The book business is precisely that, mes auteurs: a business. Yes, in many instances we're selling art, but I've always been of the opinion that the art of the book is almost always found in its content, not in its form; if a majority of consumers want their books electronically, any publisher or bookseller resisting that change will likely be driven out of business. If it sounds Darwinian, that's because it is. If you're not selling what people want, you're not going to be in business very long.

This isn't at all to say that the physical book is going extinct (though hardcover fiction may, à mon avis, be more or less gone within a few years)—I'm only saying that refusing to cultivate an electronic platform or sell e-books due to the misguided notion that you're somehow betraying an inanimate cultural medium is, well, childish. Books aren't people; they don't have feelings. Those who really love them will buy and sell them in whatever format is available.

The book is very old, cats & kittens, but before we had them we had scrolls and before that we had tablets and before that we had oral traditions. The codex—a book with a cover and pages—hasn't been around forever and it won't be around forever, and the sooner publishers, booksellers, and other industry insiders realize this and not only accommodate but embrace the changes that are revolutionizing the way people read, the better.

The Death of (Another) Format (Rerun)

One more rerun from the PMN vaults. Enjoy!

Episode: "The Death of (Another) Format"
Originally aired: Monday, August 9th, 2010

A couple of months ago, I mentioned my belief that e-readers will quickly make large print paper books obsolete. After careful analysis, mes auteurs, I'm comfortable predicting the death of another format (although I think this one will take much longer): the mass market paperback.

For those not familiar, the mass market paperback is that chunky, newsprinty $4 to $8 paperback you find in airports and grocery stores (in addition to traditional independent and chain bookstores). It's especially popular with genre fiction (fantasy, mystery, romance, science fiction). Historically, they've sold well because they're cheap, lightweight, and don't take up a lot of space; not many people buy them to display on bookshelves or coffee tables.

E-books are already relatively cheap, and they have no weight and occupy no physical space at all. As the cost and heft of e-readers steadily declines, there will be (in my opinion) no reason to buy a mass market paperback rather than an e-book, and I think this will lead to the format's demise.

A lot of people are currently worried that e-books will kill the hardcover, but I find this relatively unlikely. Hardcovers have been status symbols and conversation pieces for centuries, if not millennia. People like having bookshelves full of hardcovers. They like having them signed. They like physically perusing a library rather than flipping through a list of titles on a screen. For these reasons (among others), I think hardcovers will survive the conversion to e-books, although I certainly expect print runs to be reduced and POD to become a more tenable option for smaller publishers.

As for the mass market paperback: granted, the lendability factor will definitely keep it alive for a few more years, and it will probably take decades beyond that before the second-hand market begins to fold. As soon as solid lending or renting protocols are established by the e-book industry, however, I don't see any reason why consumers would rather have a physical, low-quality paperback than a non-physical, high-quality e-book. Can you?

A Lesson on Brand Management

As I've mentioned a few times before, mes auteurs, publishing is a strange industry in many ways. One of the ways in which it differs from other enterprises is that the author of the work, not its physical manufacturer, is the brand name. For the most part, no one cares who publishes a given book; they only care about who wrote it and what it's about.

Part of this is intrinsic to the industry: just like with movies and music, the writer(s)/actor(s)/artist(s) is/are the source of the desired material, so regardless of whose label is affixed to those names, consumers will make their purchases based principally on the artists involved. As a culture, we care about Johnny Depp more than Lionsgate, Jay-Z more than Def Jam Recordings, and Suzanne Collins more than Scholastic.

Another part of it, however, is due to publishers' treatment of their own brands. Many include their logos on the spines and back covers of their books, but never the front (Penguin Classics is a notable exception), and publishers with myriad subdivisions and imprints further confuse consumers by including those logos but not the logo of the parent company.

How many of you knew that Dutton, Gotham, Prentice Hall, Riverhead, and Viking were all part of Penguin? That Knopf, Crown, and Ballantine are all Random House (and that those groups contain their own smaller imprints)? That Grand Central (with its imprint, Twelve) is Hachette's, as is Little, Brown & Co.? I could go on, but you get the point.

I think a significant problem for publishers in the industry today is a lack of brand consolidation. A lot of it is because individual imprints have their own specialties and want to maintain their identities apart from their parent publisher: Threshold (Simon & Schuster) specializes in conservative politics and nonfiction, Tor (Macmillan) in science fiction and fantasy, &c. This is all fine and good—or at least, it has been—but with companies like Amazon and Barnes & Noble beginning to dominate the market, publishers will have to change the way they play the game.

As Sarah Lacy at TechCrunch notes, Amazon is preparing to take over the role of publisher in the world of tomorrow. And in that hypothetical world, I think Amazon's name would be just as important as most of its authors'.

Unless traditional publishers can reinforce their names and reaffirm their relevance over the next five years, I don't see why anyone will prefer a Random House book or a Penguin book over an Amazon/Kindle book. Authors will always be major brands in publishing, but I think publishers will need to increase their visibility as well. If they continue to bank on running the show from behind the scenes, it's my opinion that it will be to their long-term detriment.

Two Households, Both Alike in Dignity

The sample sizes aren't quite identical yet, folks (232 votes this round compared to 342 last round), but currently 54% of those of you who responded own an e-reader, as opposed to only 42% in June 2010. Granted, this is an entirely unscientific survey, but it seems to me that e-reading is on the rise. Not that we couldn't have guessed this already.

Speaking of e-books, I thought I'd take a moment to rehash the two primary ways they're sold: via either the agency model or the wholesale model. How does this affect you? Well, let's just say it's in the area y'all have in common with Queen Elizabeth II. That is, your royalties (/royal teas).

With jokes like these, I will be the best/most awkward dad ever.

The Agency Model

The agency model of e-book sales is the one you've heard about most recently. As opposed to the previous model (see below), the agency model assumes that the publisher is selling directly to consumers, with retailers like Amazon serving as intermediaries. Therefore, the publisher sets the the price the consumer will pay, and the retailer gets a cut for each copy sold.

For example: a publisher prices an e-book at $10.00. They sell it to consumers via an on-line retailer like Amazon, and Amazon gets a 30% cut. Each time a book is sold, Amazon gets $3.00 and the publisher gets $7.00. Those $7.00 are used to pay the publisher's overhead (everything from utilities and the purchase of new software/equipment to employee salaries and marketing budgets) and to pay you, the author.

Depending on your royalty agreement, which may range anywhere from 25% to 50% of net receipts, you'll get anywhere from $1.75 to $5.00 per book (depending on the royalty rate and the publisher's definition of net receipts). As far as I know, the going royalty rate is stuck down at around 25%, but many organizations (including the Authors Guild) are trying to increase it.

The Wholesale Model

The wholesale model of e-book sales is the method that has been used almost exclusively in the industry for the past infinity billion years and is ported directly from the world of physical book sales. In this scenario, publishers sell e-books directly to retailers, who then have the right to re-sell them to consumers for whatever price they want.

Again, let's imagine a $10.00 e-book. The publisher sells it to an on-line retailer like Amazon at roughly a 50% discount, at which point Amazon can sell it to you for whatever price strikes their fancy. Amazon could sell it for $5.00 and make no profit, they could sell it for $10.00 and make a $5.00 profit, or they could sell it for $0.99 and take a $4.01 loss.

Regardless, $5.00 flows back to the publisher to cover overhead and pay you your royalties. This time, however, there are $2.00 fewer floating around to cover those expenses, and depending on how your royalties are calculated, you'll only get between $1.25 and $2.50 (there's no question about whether the retailer's commission figures into net receipts, since under the wholesale model no such commission exists).

Granted, your royalty rates will probably come in closer to the $1.00 – $2.00 per book end of the spectrum for a $10.00 e-book, but $0.75 to $1.00 difference per book adds up quickly if you're moving a lot of units.

While I don't imagine a lot of publishers do this, it's possible for them to get into trouble if they're selling physical books via the wholesale model and e-books via the agency model. Because the publisher controls the price of one and the e-retailer controls that of the other, you can get into situations where the e-book costs more than the physical book, and in those situations consumers are (rightfully) angry.

Not that it costs $0.00 to produce an e-book, mind you, but it does cost substantially less than producing a physical book.

After hearing this and e-self-publishing success stories like that of J.A. Konrath, your first reaction may be: "Eff it, I'm putting my novels up as e-books on Amazon right now!"

Not so fast, Speed Racer. Unless you're a near-professional cover artist, e-book designer, and editor (in addition to your authorial skills), you're going to need help producing a quality e-book, and you're almost certainly going to have to price it below $9.99. Without the seal of approval of a traditional publisher—which, contrary to popular belief, is still useful social currency—you'll have a hard time selling your 150,000-word fantasy e-epic at $12.99. Especially if no one knows who you are yet.

So: while I encourage you to explore all the e-options available to you, keep these two models in mind when seeking traditional representation for our newest and least traditional format.

Tomorrow: a lesson in brand management!

Prithee, Inform Me: Return of the E-reader

The last time I polled you on your e-reading habits in June, 42% of you indicated you owned an e-reader and 58% of you said you didn't. With Christmas come and gone and a variety of new and improved readers on the market, I thought I'd revisit the question.

Guest Post: Is "Kindling" For You?

by C.J. Lyons

The publishing industry is in an era of upheaval, forcing authors to flex their entrepreneurial muscles, searching for new avenues of income and ways to keep their books in the public's eye.

One way of doing this is to self e-publish your backlist or other books that you hold the rights to. With more and more readers embracing e-books and e-books becoming the fastest growing segment of publishing, the idea of cutting out the middle men and keeping profits for ourselves is tempting.

Here are a few things to think about before walking the path of electronic self-publication:

Why self e-publish?

Like many authors, once I was firmly established with NYC publishers, I never thought about e-publishing or self-publishing, much less doing both!

But I found myself with four manuscripts that were previously in the hands of NYC publishers but for a variety of reasons never made it to publication. Then I saw a blog by multi-published thriller author JA Konrath discussing his own experiment with electronic self-publishing. His argument was logical and the numbers impressive, but I was still skeptical.

I wanted these books to find an audience but I didn't want to tie them to contracts I might later regret, especially as these four novels were all romantic suspense/thrillers and my career has moved to more mainstream suspense/thriller. So, I decided to perform my own self-publishing experiment.

I realized that I could use these books as promotional products as well as money-makers. Since I was in control of when they were released, how long they were available, and what their price was, I had a greater freedom than I do with my traditionally published works.

This turned out to be an unexpected bonus as by the time I had them formatted and ready for publication it was December, 2009. Then a few weeks later the earthquake in Haiti hit. Since I'm a pediatric ER doctor as well as a thriller novelist, I wanted to raise money for Doctors Without Borders.

What better way than using my experimental self e-pubbed books?

I sent out a newsletter and posted on my website and a few blogs that I was donating the proceeds of my Kindle sales for the month of February to DWB. I chose the Kindle format simply because it is exceptionally easy to track Kindle sales on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis through my Amazon DTP (digital text platform) account.

What I discovered was: Kindle readers read… a lot! I ended up raising over $1600 for DWB, which translated to almost 1700 books sold in one month on Kindle.

Possible Pitfalls

Anyone deciding to self-publish should have a good grasp of their target audience. You want to build an audience who will stay with you and help spread the word of your books—and that means making a promise to always deliver a high quality read.

In other words, just as in mainstream publishing, self e-publishing is still all about the reader.

It's not about clearing your closet of dusty manuscripts just because you can. Unless you plan on giving your work away for free, your goal is to attract paying customers. Which means the books you self e-publish need to be just as good as any book a NYC publisher is selling.

If you have a backlist that you own the rights to, they've already been professionally edited, you're good to go. Do be aware that publishers own the cover art, so you'll need to create a new cover for your e-book.

If you're planning to publish a book that hasn't been previously published, make certain it is professionally edited. The four books I chose for my experiment were all edited prior to my self-publication—three by NYC editors (before their road to publication went astray) and one by a professional freelance editor. Do not rely solely on your critique partners or your Great Aunt Martha who gushes to her bridge club about your writing!

Remember, not only are you competing against NYT bestsellers, you're also selling a product to a consumer. If you expect to win their hard-earned money—and more importantly, their time, attention, and future sales loyalty—then you need to create a worthy product.

What about the money?

Some authors are focused on the income they can earn from self e-publishing. I choose to use these books as promotional devices, a way to keep my name out there in between traditionally published books. But that still meant finding the optimal price points.

I did my own experiment, setting various price points for my four novels. The first, NERVES OF STEEL, is a romantic suspense that includes a cover quote from Sandra Brown as well as endorsements from a dozen NYT bestsellers, so I set it at the highest, $3.99.

The next two books, CHASING SHADOWS and LOST IN SHADOWS, were romantic thrillers, the first two of a series, and were a bit shorter in length than my other two novels, only around 80,000 words. I priced them at $2.99.

The last novel, BORROWED TIME, was the oldest manuscript of the group, and I priced it at $1.99.

My results? In the first week, with no advertising or promotion, the most expensive, NERVES OF STEEL, sold 42 copies on Amazon and 4 on Smashwords.

CHASING SHADOWS sold 85 copies on Amazon and 10 on Smashwords. The second book in the Shadows Op series, LOST IN SHADOWS, sold 49 copies on Amazon and 9 on Smashwords.

And the least expensive of the four, BORROWED TIME, sold 37 copies on Amazon and 4 on Smashwords.

After that first week, when I began to advertise my program to raise money for Doctors Without Borders, my sales increased dramatically to an average of about 50-55 sales a day on Amazon alone.

Bottom Line

It's not a huge amount of money, but I'm on track to make more in a year than I would if I took any of the offers from NYC publishers that I'd received for these particular manuscripts. All with no expenses incurred other than my time and a few dollars for the copyright, ISBNs, and the stock art I used in the cover design.

I now have seven e-books and am experimenting with new ways to use them as promotional tools. Since I'm also traditionally published, I like to use my e-books as reader appreciation gifts. I've incorporated one novel as a free giveaway to anyone who "likes" my Facebook fan page at http://www.facebook.com/CJLyonsBestsellingThrillerAuthor.

Amazon and Barnes and Noble don't allow self e-pubbed books to be given away for free (at least if they do, I haven't figured out how), so I also plan to have special "sales" pricing a title at $0.99 for a limited time.

As with all of my e-book efforts, I won't do any promotion except letting my newsletter readers and perhaps a tweet or post to Facebook or a group. So far, that's working.

Self e-publishing has its place in an author's career path, whether to keep a backlist alive, to try new genres and markets, to use as a promotional tool in conjunction with traditionally published books, or to generate a little income on the side.

Thanks for reading!

As a pediatric ER doctor, CJ Lyons has lived the life she writes about. In addition to being an award-winning medical suspense author, CJ is a nationally known presenter and keynote speaker. Her first novel, LIFELINES (Berkley, March 2008), received praise as a "breathtakingly fast-paced medical thriller" from Publishers Weekly, was reviewed favorably by the Baltimore Sun and Newsday, named a Top Pick by Romantic Times Book Review Magazine, and became a National Bestseller. Her award-winning, critically acclaimed Angels of Mercy series (LIFELINES, WARNING SIGNS, URGENT CARE and CRITICAL CONDITION) is available now. Her newest project is as co-author of a new suspense series with Erin Brockovich. To learn more about CJ and her work, go to www.cjlyons.net.